Out of NDA! [Mod edit: Not really, see posts]

DankoTheHun Wrote:Let's look at the terms for a sec. And no the terms are NOT confidential!

Third line down, in bold: "Confidential - Restricted Internal Use Only"

The agreement is not automatically a publicly available document because you must be going through the process of signing up for the iPhone developer program to read it. You click to say you're interested in dealing with them, then they disclose their terms. Typical business deal. That doesn't make the terms public. Exactly how much control over their "trade secrets" that affords them is debatable, as you point out. You can take that up with Apple if you wish. I suspect, however, that their legal representation is compensated much more than yours.

Anyway, please carefully review section 5.3 of your iphone SDK agreement, which has specifically been communicated from Apple, through their mailing list by a representative of the company, to be in full effect until specifically said to be otherwise.

Quote:But, then later it says that any information that is available to the public not through no fault or breach of the recipient will not be deemed confidential.

I don't know exactly which part you are talking about, but there is a section which states something to that effect, but the "recipient" you are referring to is Apple, and the information that is being referred to is yours, not theirs. I am hesitant to discuss this further, but I figure it's worth bringing up to point out that I am skeptical that you correctly understood that part of the agreement.

I agree that there is some gray area in the agreement which provides lots of wiggle room, but at this forum we aren't going to take any chances with that. So the bottom line is: No, you may not discuss non-public information about iPhone related development here at iDevGames until 5.3 of the agreement has been released by Apple.

Clearly it is unacceptable, according to the terms of the agreement, to speak publicly about it *anywhere*, so a "definitely" attached specifically to blogs struck me as being petty, coming from a representative of Apple. I admit that I was about an 11 on a 10 scale of irritation when I read his email, but it's really not Scott's fault that the NDA is still in effect and I shouldn't be one to attack the messenger, so I apologize for that. In fact, I am actually starting to get used to the idea that Apple might *never* release NDA, and so there's no use being bothered by it. But just for the record, here is why I was irritated:

I signed up for the developer account at the very beginning, all along expecting that I would eventually find help figuring things out in public discussions once iPhone OS 2.0 came along. Then I was even accepted into the the developer program and paid actual money, expecting that I would be able to communicate publicly for help. But instead, I feel duped by Apple. The slap in the face is that I'm starting to realize that it was my fault for ever assuming that we would be allowed to communicate publicly about it. I do feel that Apple has somewhat misrepresented their product, but after calming down about this I realize that it is still an attractive enough deal that I'm still interested in it, even if under NDA permanently... I just wish they had communicated that this would be the situation. In fact, I still wish they would give some public indication of what exactly their intentions are. I understand it is fully within their rights to withhold that information, and I accept that because I still want to play, but I must say that it appears to be very poor business behavior on their part.

One thing they could do to rectify this situation is make a public statement about their intentions, and offer a free three month extension of the paid developer accounts. Microsoft did that to reward early adopters of XNA for putting up with problems they had in the beginning, and I see no reason why Apple shouldn't be able to offer the same in this situation.

[edit] Oh yeah, and BTW, I didn't originally refer to it as being "silly". I edited that in over previous language.

AnotherJake Wrote:Clearly it is unacceptable, according to the terms of the agreement, to speak publicly about it *anywhere*, so a "definitely" attached specifically to blogs struck me as being petty, coming from a representative of Apple. I admit that I was about an 11 on a 10 scale of irritation when I read his email, but it's really not Scott's fault that the NDA is still in effect and I shouldn't be one to attack the messenger, so I apologize for that. In fact, I am actually starting to get used to the idea that Apple might *never* release NDA, and so there's no use being bothered by it. But just for the record, here is why I was irritated:

[edit] Oh yeah, and BTW, I didn't originally refer to it as being "silly". I edited that in over previous language.

Yeh, I noticed that. I see why you are irritated; however that's not what I wasn't understanding. What I'm not understanding is how it's petty for an Apple rep to attach "definitely" to blogs.

Hairball183 Wrote:Yeh, I noticed that. I see why you are irritated; however that's not what I wasn't understanding. What I'm not understanding is how it's petty for an Apple rep to attach "definitely" to blogs.

Anyway,

-LG

That I got the impression that it was petty does not mean you must also see it as petty, nor does an impression imply that it is a matter of fact. The impression I got was influenced by my disposition at the time -- as I explained in great detail. I am confused about why you feel this is so exceptional that it should be parsed in ever increasing detail. It's not fun having to explain my explanation of my fairly innocuous comment. Judging by your tone, it now seems like you are suggesting that I was somehow very wrong about what I said, and are perhaps attempting to call me out on it. Why you would do that, I have no clue, but that's what it's starting to look like.

AnotherJake Wrote:That I got the impression that it was petty does not mean you must also see it as petty, nor does an impression imply that it is a matter of fact. The impression I got was influenced by my disposition at the time -- as I explained in great detail. I am confused about why you feel this is so exceptional that it should be parsed in ever increasing detail.

I don't really see this as exceptional; and I'm sorry if I've given you that impression.

AnotherJake Wrote:It's not fun having to explain my explanation of my fairly innocuous comment. Judging by your tone, it now seems like you are suggesting that I was somehow very wrong about what I said, and are perhaps attempting to call me out on it. Why you would do that, I have no clue, but that's what it's starting to look like.

No, no, no, not at all. For someone with as little understanding as me, I would not in the least dare to presume upon you and the members of this forum by saying that you were wrong in what you said. I was simply wondering what you saw as petty. However, as I've already trolled this thread too much, and it doesn't matter in the least, I'll just leave it alone.

No big deal Hairball. Just gotta be careful about presentation sometimes.

Alright, so then I'll take another shot at explaining the "This includes other mailing lists, forums, and definitely blogs." thing. To me, whilst I was seeing red, this looked like there are some things which Apple finds to be more offensive at violating NDA than others. As if blogs have some magical power which makes them much more guilty than other avenues of public discussion. Tried another way, this came across to me as:

"This includes other mailing lists, forums, and definitely not blogs -- because blogs are the biggest threat to our company. We talk about it all the time in meetings, and we all agree that blogs are a major no-no, so I need to mention that you *definitely* can't share information about iPhone using blogs. The other ones, not so much, but blogs, well, they're in a category all of their own. If we catch you talking on other mailing lists or public forums we're going to crack down on you. But if we happen to see that you're talking about iPhone in a blog, we will nail you to the wall and sue you for every penny you've ever made, and any of your surviving parents and grandparents, and future children for generations to come. Never EVER talk about iPhone on blogs. Mkay? Thank you for your understanding."

Okay, obviously that is blown waaaay out of proportion, but I hope it better illustrates to you why I made the flippant remark that I did. If that doesn't explain it, then we'll have to give up on this one.

Quote:Okay, obviously that is blown waaaay out of proportion, but I hope it better illustrates to you why I made the flippant remark that I did. If that doesn't explain it, then we'll have to give up on this one.

I've been thinking about those. The "when" is particularly interesting. I noticed that when I saw it the first time, but have been ignoring it.

The article linked off of /. somehow reminded me of all the other stories I've been catching about Apple lately, not related to iPhone. First, I must mention that, judging by other articles on infoworld's site, they appear to be notably biased against Apple. Nothing new with general Apple-bashing, but at least that particular article rings true with me.

... getting back to the "other stories" I mentioned and the "when" in the message: I've recently read about massive flash memory shipments to Apple, crazy touch-related patents which reminded me of Newton, rumors of apple touch tablets, and articles about all those tying into Apple's new .me "cloud" of push technologies. Plus I'm thinking about their recent efforts toward resolution independence -- HiDPI. Not to mention how unbelievably cool the iPhone and iPod touch are, plus how popular the MacBook Air is (defying my own wildly best-case estimations of how well it might have fared) and various related ideas around that.

So earlier, I was thinking that maybe some GPL issues with Quake 3 or some other bizarre money-deal might be holding up NDA release or keeping it permanent, but... now I'm starting to lean toward the idea of Apple possibly gearing up for yet another atom-bomb of a product announcement soon. As further evidence, I heard earlier today that they mentioned in a financial call that they are planning on swallowing margin because of a strategy to eat costs on an upcoming "product transition". Apple sacrificing margin is pretty unusual. In conjunction with all the other little tibits of stories I've caught lately, this absolutely *reeks* of something big brewing... which *might* eventually explain why NDA is being held up.

AnotherJake Wrote:I've been thinking about those. The "when" is particularly interesting. I noticed that when I saw it the first time, but have been ignoring it.

The article linked off of /. somehow reminded me of all the other stories I've been catching about Apple lately, not related to iPhone. First, I must mention that, judging by other articles on infoworld's site, they appear to be notably biased against Apple. Nothing new with general Apple-bashing, but at least that particular article rings true with me.

... getting back to the "other stories" I mentioned and the "when" in the message: I've recently read about massive flash memory shipments to Apple, crazy touch-related patents which reminded me of Newton, rumors of apple touch tablets, and articles about all those tying into Apple's new .me "cloud" of push technologies. Plus I'm thinking about their recent efforts toward resolution independence -- HiDPI. Not to mention how unbelievably cool the iPhone and iPod touch are, plus how popular the MacBook Air is (defying my own wildly best-case estimations of how well it might have fared) and various related ideas around that.

So earlier, I was thinking that maybe some GPL issues with Quake 3 or some other bizarre money-deal might be holding up NDA release or keeping it permanent, but... now I'm starting to lean toward the idea of Apple possibly gearing up for yet another atom-bomb of a product announcement soon. As further evidence, I heard earlier today that they mentioned in a financial call that they are planning on swallowing margin because of a strategy to eat costs on an upcoming "product transition". Apple sacrificing margin is pretty unusual. In conjunction with all the other little tibits of stories I've caught lately, this absolutely *reeks* of something big brewing... which *might* eventually explain why NDA is being held up.

Wow, this sounds serious! If I may add my two cents (whether you want it or not ): I personally think it will be tablet MacBooks and/or touchscreen iMacs. That's their next huge step in my opinion, and that may explain why the Cocoa Touch APIs have been left in NDA. All of that is powerful enough to be ported straight over to larger scale use, so why not do it? You watch. It will happen...

Mac users swear by their computers, PC users swear at their computers. ~Unknown

The touch interface is most definitely the way computing is going -- no doubt about it. The only question is "when" and what size? The first company to get out there with an affordable "touch computer" is going to utterly dominate that market. And what I'm thinking is something like a giant iPhone or iPod Touch. A new class of device, half-way between an iPhone and a MacBook. It would be like a pre-packaged computing appliance which does all your daily tasks like email and web-surfing, but might also do things like word-processing and office-related tasks like spreadsheets. And with Mobile Me, I would guess that a lot of your storage needs would be found in "the cloud". Maybe the size of a book so you could page through a virtual book using the touch interface. I can imagine this thing would be killer for school and work. You might be right about the MacBook and iMac lines too. What if they did all three?

AnotherJake Wrote:with Mobile Me, I would guess that a lot of your storage needs would be found in "the cloud".

I think the fiasco of the the Mobile Me launch has demonstrated just how risky it is having so much storage in "the cloud". Also getting access to it when it is working is another problem. 3G phones may be great in theory but when the infrastructure is not there to support it it just does not work. Fixed lines are not much more reliable either when you throw in the joys of incompetent providers.

AnotherJake Wrote:The touch interface is most definitely the way computing is going -- no doubt about it.

Touch can never completely replace conventional pointing devices due to drastically lower input precision. Pointing at a specific pixel with your finger is impossible. Pointing at a specific pixel with a cursor is possible. Pixel-precise operations would require an impractically large zoom factor or some sort of awkward touch-controlled cursor.

Not to say it's not applicable for many cases, but there's a huge sacrifice involved in not having a pixel-precise pointing device.